Prior to the European Council meeting of May 22-23 the newly founded Dutch ‘Europe platform’ sends a letter to the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture and Science asking for support for EU cultural policies and more alignment between European and national cultural policies.

The European Cultural Foundation has sent an open letter to Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, calling for making culture, and museums, an integral part of the future of Europe at the upcoming summit on 9 May 2019 in Sibiu, Romania.

In May, hundreds of millions of Europeans will vote for a new European Parliament. The incoming Members of the European Parliament will move to Brussels during a crucial moment in EU-history. That is why a coalition of organisations that work towards a more democratic society, are making themselves heard.

The European cultural and creative sectors advocate for a culture and Europe that is democratic, diverse, fair, free, human, inclusive and vital. This Culture Action Europe campaign calls on political parties to take on board this campaign’s recommendations in their programs:

We are writing as a group of 59 organisations from across the cultural and creative sectors ahead of today's vote of the Budget committee on the next EU Multi-Annual Financial Framework (MFF) 2021-2027.

We welcome the report's proposal to increase the Creative Europe budget to €2.8bn, and call on you to support this much needed boost to the only EU programme dedicated to cultural and creative sectors.

As it is now well established, culture and creativity are among Europe’s strongest assets. Their contribution to the social, economic and artistic development of Europe fully justifies the added value of an EU investment in culture.

But these sectors remain structurally underfinanced. As highlighted in the impact assessment accompanying the investEU proposal, the financing gap for creative SMEs and micro organisations across Europe is estimated to be somewhere between €8bn and €13bn.

At 0,16% of the MFF, the Creative Europe budget is by no means proportionate to these sectors' contribution, and the programme has very low success rates.

We hope we can count on you to support the proposed increased budget for Creative Europe.

Last week the Central European University in Budapest announced it would partially relocate to Vienna given the Hungarian government’s unyielding hostility to civil society and academic freedom. Around the world, civil society including academics, journalists and philanthropists, courageously pursue their mission, often at great personal cost.

We are a group of leaders of private philanthropic foundations committed to strong and vibrant civil society. A healthy, functioning democracy depends on it.

We condemn the violence directed to civil society activists globally. We deplore the growing climate of fear and intolerance in which civil society is publicly demonized, physically threatened and administratively shut down.

We stand side by side with our civil society peers.

Civil society is an essential pillar of democracy. Without it, our democracy is diminished.

In our series of portraits of Research and Development grantees this time SUPER, the festival of peripheries, in Milan. After participating in the 2017 Idea Camp ‘Moving Communities’ they have been very active in Milan and soon present a festival on their findings.